Child abuse spanned from 1950s to the 1980s Antonio Provolo Institute for deaf children

The allegations first emerged in 2006 which led to the arrest of Italian priest Nicola Corradi in 2016

Pope Francis along with high ranking Vatican officials ignored child sex abuse allegations in three Catholic schools for deaf children but failed to punish those involved, according to a Washington Post investigation.

The allegations first emerged in 2006 which led to the arrest of Italian priest Nicola Corradi in 2016.

Corradi was believed to be the 'ringleader' of the abuse.

A fourth two suspects have charges pending while a 14th has already been sentenced to 10 years in jail for rape and sexual abuse.

The child abuse spanned through the 1950s to the 1980s at the Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf in Verona, Italy.

It also began in Argentina at Provolo schools in Lujan de Cuyo and La Plata in the 1980s.

In 2013, the year Francis was chosen to lead the church, and again in 2014, the victims sent a letter to the pope with a list of 14 alleged abusers.

Two of them—including a man who said he had been raped hundreds of times by a priest when he was a boy in the late 1990s—were able to personally hand Francis a letter with the abusers’ names.

Four months later, one of Francis’ close associates in the Vatican wrote the group a letter saying Francis “welcomed with lively participation what you wanted to confide in Him” but reminding the group “of what the Holy See has done and keeps on doing with an unwavering commitment on clerical sexual abuses.”

But in the following years, the local bishop maintained that the group of victims—he later speculated that they were behind the Argentina allegations as well—were after the Provolo schools’ property.

And after the Vatican investigation, only one priest, ordered to a life of penance and prayer, was punished.

The accusations arose later in Argentina, where the most recent alleged abuse occurred in 2016.

But they did lead to criminal prosecutions.

In 2016, an anonymous woman who had attended the school in Lujan went to a state senator with her allegations.

Two days later, prosecutors raided the school and found pornography and damning letters implicating a 58-year-old Argentine priest.

The authorities shut down the school that year, and they launched an investigation into the La Plata school, where they also found allegations of abuse against at least five men who worked there, including Corradi.

The prosecutors allege Corradi, who is still under house arrest and who has not yet entered a plea, helped other predators at the school access the children.

According to the Post, Francis appointed a bishop to oversee the Provolo schools after the scandal.

That bishop, Alberto Germán Bochatey, has said the lawyers representing the victims had overstated the allegations.

“They try to build a big case that [it was a] house of horrors, 40 or 50 cases, but there are little more than 10,” he told the Post. He also said he believed the Freemasons were behind the allegations.

This week, Francis will gather a summit of prominent bishops from around the country to discuss the church’s sex abuse crisis.